When Grace Intervenes Our Troubles

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Psalm 50:15

“Call upon me in the day of trouble,” God says in Psalm 50:15. “I will deliver you, and you will glorify me.” God desires praise from our lives … but the only way fresh praise and glory will come is as we keep coming to him in times of need and difficulty. Then he will intervene to show himself strong on our behalf, and we will know that he has done it.

Are not we all prone to become over confident and think we can handle things just fine? But let some trouble come, and how quickly we sense our inadequacy.

For some reason we want to carry on by ourselves.

The devil is not terribly frightened of our human efforts and credentials. But he knows his kingdom is damaged when we begin to lift up our hearts to God. [1]

I’m asking God to come fill this place … my soul with more of him. The gift today is acknowledging my weakness and claiming my strength in Christ.

This is a song I’ve played a few times this morning. Here are the words and the music.

Fall Afresh | Jeremy Riddle | Album: The Loft Sessions |Bethel Music
Listen here:https://youtu.be/8VdXLM8H-xU
target=”_blank”>Fall Afresh | Bethel Music

Awaken my soul, come awake
To hunger, to seek, to thirst
Awaken first love, come awake
And do as you did, at first

Spirit of the living God come fall afresh on me
Come wake me from my sleep
Blow through the caverns of my soul, pour in me to overflow
To overflow

Awaken my soul, come awake
To worship with all your strength

Spirit of the living God come fall afresh on me
Come wake me from my sleep
Blow through the caverns of my soul, pour in me to overflow

Come and fill this place
Let Your glory now invade
Spirit come and fill this place
Let Your glory now invade

Spirit of the living God come fall afresh on me
Come wake me from my sleep
Blow through the caverns of my soul, pour in me to overflow
To overflow

The Weakness Gift 5

40 Gifts of Lent  | When Grace Intervenes our Troubles: Gift 5 | [1] Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire, Jim Cymbala, page 57

The Song | Sunday Respite 

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Sunday Respite 1 Lent

PSALM 100 {The Message}

On your feet now — applaud God!
Bring a gift of laughter,
sing yourselves into his presence.

Know this: God is God, and God, God.
He made us; we didn’t make him.
We’re His people, His well-tended sheep.

Enter with the password: “Thank you!”
Make yourselves at home, talking praise.
Thank him. Worship him.

For God is sheer beauty,
all-generous in love,
loyal always and ever.

 The whole world is singing a song. It’s the song without words. It’s the song you were created to sing too. We forgot our song long ago, when we turned and ran away from God. But Jesus has come to bring us home to God—and give us back our song. So go on—sing your song! -Sally Lloyd-Jones

Sunday Respite 2 Song

40 Gifts of Lent  | Quotation: Thoughts to Make Your Heart Sing, Sally Lloyd-Jones; page 28, Sing Your Song

The Rescue

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Gift 4-2015

He reached down from heaven and rescued me. Psalm 18:16

God will not only deliver his people out of their troubles in due time, but he will bear them up under their troubles in the mean time.

Upon God’s faithfulness rests our whole hope of future blessedness. Only as He is faithful will His covenants stand and his promises be honored. Only as we have complete assurance that He is faithful may we live in peace and look forward with assurance to the life to come. He will ever be true to His pledged word. He will never remove His loving kindness nor suffer His faithfulness to fail.

God will always be himself, and grace is an attribute of His holy being. He can no more hide his grace than the sun can hide its brightness. God’s grace is infinite and eternal.

Instead of straining to comprehend this truth, it would be better and simpler to compare God’s grace with our need. We can never know the enormity of our sin, neither is it necessary that we should. What we can know is that where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.

He reached down from heaven to rescue us.

Gift 4-2015-

40 Gifts of Lent | The Rescue: Gift 4 | Quotations from: The Knowledge of the Holy, A.W. Tozer; page 87, The Faithfulness of God; Page 102, The Grace of God. 

When God Meets our Deepest Needs

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Gift 3-2015

Your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Matthew 6:8

As a parent, you instinctively know what your children need, often times before they ask you. Do you give them what they need even if they haven’t asked and when they do ask, are you not happy to meet their needs because you love them immensely?

Suppose your child asks for something which you know is not the best choice for them. Would you give them what they asked for knowing it is not good for them or do you respond with compassion and unconditional love with saying, “No, not now.”

I believe we often overlook the similarities in the way we parent our children and the way that God is parenting us. God is, after all, our heavenly Father, conveying the authority, warmth, and intimacy of a loving father’s care. A father that knows what we need before we ask him. Compare how your children respond to you when they don’t get their way and how you respond to God when life is hard. I suppose we should give our children more grace when they are not content as God is being gracious to us as we learn to trust him with our needs.

In the gospel of Matthew 6, Jesus is instructing his disciples how to pray, telling them that the heavenly Father knows what they need before they pray. I’m called to trust that God sees what I see. In fact, he sees beyond what I see. Paul Miller writes in A Praying Life, “God sees the whole story and is completely trustworthy to be at work on a grand scale, in the minutia, and even in my own life.”

God knows what you need before you ask him.

Gift 3-2015-

40 Gifts of Lent | When God Meets Our Deepest Needs: Gift 3 | A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World, Paul Miller

The Promise: A Continuous Experience of God’s Grace

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Gift 2-2015

God said, “When the rainbow appears in the cloud, I’ll see it and remember the eternal covenant between God and everything living, every last living creature on Earth.” Genesis 9:17 (The Message)

The book of Genesis proclaims that God created a perfect world, appointing every structure, force, and creature a place and task within the perfectly balanced order of the universe. [1] He created Adam and Eve to bear his image, to live in harmony with God and his creation without fear, pain, grief, anger, evil…sin. There was a time when sin was not an element in creation or the human experience. Sin arrived when Adam and Eve knowingly and willfully made the choice to act on the lie of the deceiver. In defiance, they rebelled against God’s good gifts and loving his word. What was once a beautiful and perfect creation is now defiled with total depravity and human corruption.

There is no treasure so wonderful as that continuous experience of God’s grace towards us. The colors shine through the storm and clouds of our sin as a reminder of God’s promise of forgiveness, love and grace. God preserves his creation in spite of man. God continues to redeem, in spite of our sin. [2]

Dear Lord, May the memory of our great sins, our many temptations, our falls, bring afresh into our minds the remembrance of your great help, of your support from heaven, of the great grace that saves. There is no treasure so wonderful as that continuous experience of your grace toward us. [3]

The Promise Gift 2-2015

40 Gifts of Lent | The Promise: A Continuous Experience of God’s Grace: Gift 2 [1] Far As the Curse is Found: The Covenant Story of Redemption, Michael D. Williams; page 63, The Fall  [2] page 95, The Flood | [3] Excerpt from: The Valley of Vision, page 71, The Dark Guest

Love to the Uttermost: The Unchanging God

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Gift 1-2015

Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the season of Lent, when we have the privilege of fixing our gaze on the giver of life, our Redeemer, the one who has rescued us from ourselves. He came, God-incarnate, to save us to the extreme, as man to die our death. Herein is love to the utmost. For God so loved the world he gave. “Herein is love; when I cannot rise to him he draws near on wings of grace, to raise me to himself.” [1]

In a world of created changeable things, only God alone remains unshaken, unchanging. Only God alone remains true to his promise, for what he says, he will do. [2] He struck the head of evil. He has not left us here without grace. The cross still stands. The grave is still empty.

Gift 1-2015 Psalm 90

Before the mountains were brought forth,
or ever you had formed the earth and the world,
from everlasting to everlasting you are God. Psalm 90

40 Gifts of Lent | Love to the Utmost: The Unchanging God: Gift 1 | [1] The Valley of Vision; page 16, The Gift of Gifts | [2] Numbers 23:19 | 

Snippets of Posts and Quotes | Take 4

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the-future-is-bright

The Hardest Peace | Mundane Faithfulness

I often fail, I’m often found in weakness and brokenness, but through it all I am met- always met in love. This is not simply my story and journey with cancer. It is a book written to appeal to us all as we meet the bitter edges of life on this side of eternity. In the brokenness of our unmet expectations of life, will we look for Jesus and His abundant love? Or will we tumble into bitterness and anger that leave us utterly self focused and disappointed by the hard in our story each of us are asked to receive. —Kara Tippetts  http://www.mundanefaithfulness.com

On being healed of being a big deal | Deeper Story

I’m learning to take those moments, called “small humiliations”, as gifts.  http://deeperstory.com/on-being-healed-of-being-a-big-deal/  —Micha Boyett

Don’t ever hide your joy | The Beautiful Due

There’ll be days when you’re on high beam joy. Shine on, unapologetically. But if you’re flesh and blood, there’ll be days when you dim your lights a little because you’re having a crappy day or you know someone else is having a crappy day. You can still shine on those days, its just a little dimmer and that’s perfectly alright, sometimes even quite inviting. —John Blase

Study: Working moms’ stress levels linked to ‘mental labor’ | Fox News

“A reminder of the incredible stresses working moms try to manage. A reminder for grace.” http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/08/13/study-working-moms-stress-levels-linked-to-mental-labor/ —Fox News

 The Path Through Pain | Recovery Room

“Pause and consider: in a truthful moment, do you have areas of your life plague with unnerving, breath-quickening, near-crippling anxiety?”   http://deeperstory.com/recovery-room-the-path-through-pain/  —Seth Haines

For anyone who has ever felt alone | Journey Box Media

“With You (I Feel Again)” reflects on how easy it is to be lonely in a crowd. Set to the platinum hit single, “Feel Again” by OneRepublic. Best Video: http://journeyboxmedia.com/with-you  —journeyboxmedia.com

Poetic black and white watercolors | Bored Panda

Linger here. http://www.boredpanda.com/animals-children-black-and-white-watercolor-art-elicia-edijanto/

10 self-defeating thoughts that can wreck your workout | Today

Think of yourself as an inspiration story just waiting to happen. http://www.today.com/health/10-self-defeating-thoughts-can-wreck-your-workout-1D80342643  —today.com/health

Foggy and Fine Days | Barnstorming

The weather and my mood have little connection.I have my foggy and my fine days within me; my prosperity or misfortune has little to do with the matter. (Blaise Pascal) Being lost in the fog is never forever. The sun is always up there somewhere and all will be fine. —Emily Polis Gibson  https://briarcroft.wordpress.com/2015/01/09/foggy-and-fine-days/

When Christmas Joy Becomes Sorrow Becomes Hope

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Christmas tree

Well, hello 2015! So grateful to welcome the first Monday of a new year. A new year of adventures for our family and another year of meeting new friends to share our adventures with. All of us on separate journeys, each with different stories to live out, yet through our family and friendships, our stories take on the shape of God’s providence, weaved and held together by strands of grace, hemmed in behind and before by his unstoppable love and relentless mercy. (Psalm 139:5)

When Christmas joy …

The year of 2014 neared its end with an awesome Christmas Eve celebration at our church and a wonderful Christmas morning with just the two of us, my husband and I. And we actually had a fun time! I was quite surprised by that since it was our first year we were apart from family. We were hoping for a white Christmas but instead we had Indiana sunshine that is bright as a grey wool blanket. To be honest, I was struggling to feel the joy of Christmas this year and my grumbling about the circumstances that prevented us from traveling didn’t help either. I soon realized I was substituting family to experience real joy instead of reveling in the glad tidings of great joy, for unto us a child is born; unto us a Son is given. Isaiah says, “Once more I will astound these people with wonder upon wonder…” (Isaiah 29:14). An outrageous wonder of sacrificial love… Glory to God in the highest heaven, and peace to all the earth. There was much joy!

Redeemer Christmas Eve

Photo credit: Chuck Horn, Christmas Eve, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, Indianapolis, IN

 When Christmas joy becomes sorrow …

We received a phone call informing us of sad news that a member of our family passed away unexpectedly Christmas morning. The harsh brutal bite of reality hurt, leaving an open wound of unsettling grief. I read that death is a thief whose robbery is profoundly felt during holidays. We pray our family will believe that God will never stop pouring out his grace upon them. God keeps track of all their sorrows, collects all their tears in his bottle for he has recorded each one in his book. (Psalm 56:8)

When Christmas joy becomes sorrow becomes hope …

It is hard to find hope on your own. At least I think so. I’ve never been strong enough to pull myself up by my bootstraps. I need others to remind me that joy will come in the morning. I should be reminded of God’s promises and assurance of a living hope through Christ. Here are a few quotes (and Bible verses) that have helped me to understand that it is God’s grace that joy springs out of sorrow and sorrow grows into hope.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. This living hope is our hope of salvation that includes an imperishable inheritance. The new life that we have in Christ is something that can never be taken away. (I Peter 1:3-4)

When we lay the soil of our hard lives open to the rain of grace and let joy penetrate our cracked and dry places, let joy soak into our broken skin and deep crevices, life grows. How can this not be the best thing for this world? For us? The clouds open when we mouth thanks. [1]

We are not the Author of our story. We are the characters. [2]

Suffering is unbearable if you aren’t certain that God is for you and with you…We can trust God, because the biblical story will help us endure when our own little stories seem confusing and we feel forsaken. And we can pray, as Job did. Though filled with anguish and despair, Job continued to wrestle with God—unlike his friends, who talked about God but never really knew him. In that story, God reveals himself to be almighty and approachable, transcendent and personal, and the ultimate answer to suffering. [3]

Our stories are different, our journeys are different, but to keep on keeping on, in hope, is our deepest vocation, whoever we are, wherever we live, whatever we do. [4]

Behold, I am making all things new. (Revelation 21:5)

[1] Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts | [2] Kara Tippetts, The Hardest Peace | [3] Tim Keller, Walking with God through Pain and Suffering | [4] Dr. Steven Garber, The Washington Institute for Faith, Vocation and Culture